A Difference?

There was something inside me that was just off. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but I knew that I was starting to feel a little differently. I wasn’t sure if it came from the battle with Myself or if being aware of all the things that I was eating was making a difference in the way that I felt about who I was becoming. I didn’t feel like a garbage disposal. I wasn’t consuming mass quantities of Snapple in the middle of the night. Even my size twenty-sixes were ,dare I say, becoming loose. I needed a belt for the first time in recent memory and didn’t have to worry about opening buttons after I had eaten something to accommodate my growing stomach. Come to think of it, my stomach wasn’t growing! This was unheralded. My stomach had been growing since I was seven and it apparently wasn’t happy with the equation either [yet another coupe going on in this body of mine]. I was eating, but not until the point of a mild food induced coma. I was tightening up my abs while I was walking, because I felt that I was nowhere near ready to plant my back, my bottom, or my head on a squishy mat and attempt a crunch (that would not happen until almost six months down the line). There was some hardness under those four rolls. My always toned calves were getting more firm, and for the first time, I was really appreciating the beauty of the strength in those legs, and not hiding them in jeans. I wanted to wear a skirt. But that somehow scared me as well. I had already cast aside shorts long ago. Those multi-lengthened [sometime Capri, sometime Bermuda, sometimes way to far up in places that they should not go] pieces of friction and bunching would not and had not been on this body in roughly twelve years. For the time being I wanted to keep it that way. But I could work with a skirt.

I love skirts (and now own about thirty of them), but I just didn’t feel confident wearing them all the time. I worried about what would happen should my summer / all year baby-powder supply disappear in the still of the night (captured by some rogue Baby- Powder Gnome) and leave me with thigh rubs. I know how this could sound, but you’d be amazed what sort of mental and physical tricks your mind will play on you when you’re in the process of betterment. It doesn’t matter what size you are or how many pounds you have to lose, there is always an excuse; especially in the beginning.

The first skirt on the journey to change was denim and it represented everything I loved about a good skirt. It was A-lined, as to pull away from my thighs, and it had a little bit of stretch to cover my front-butt, and third roll. I bought it at my go-to Lane Bryant and was excited when I had to get sales representative opinions on whether to buy the 26 or the 24. We all agreed on the 26 because the 24 was still a little tight. (By a little tight, I mean I threw myself up against the wall in the dressing room,made my stomach more concave by sucking it in, all the whilst I had sweat running down my face. I did all of that just to get that button to close. But my friends it did close! Hazah!)The image makes me sigh with nostalgia now, but in that moment I was so proud that I had even attempted to go a size down that my hands shook. Maybe this whole walking around and eating a little bit less thing was working. Trust me though, if they had a size 25 (which doesn’t exist) I would have been all over it! I needed a belt for my 26.

And while I sat there and stepped out of my new skirt, a thought hit me. How was it that if you’re an “average” size that you can get even numbers and odd numbers. While I know one represents juniors and the other misses, there’s no “junior plus size.” You’re just plus size, point blank period. I had no animosity towards my smaller friends and family but I was just curious. When you’re big you get the evens and wish that there were odd numbers in between to make you feel a little bit better about the digits on the back of your clothes. The psychological impacts of a 15 and not a 16, and the brevity of a 19 instead of a 20 are huge. You are just a little bit smaller than you could be. The retail mass market lines stop at 32 in store. What if that women out there was a 31 and could still shop outside of a catalogue? What if she were able to still go inside a dressing room and get sales rep opinions? How would she feel? But maybe retailers don’t see it that way. Maybe they feel that us plus size women and those who are either bottom heavy or top heavy should have been happy that we even had a market. Maybe we should have been happy that the silent clothing Big People Revolution of circa the late 80’s had gotten our clothes renamed from Husky to Plus. What was I adding to the Misses sizes that made me more aside from my waist measurements and my bust line? I'd like to think more awesomeness and love! Should Misses then be called Subtract Size, because to be less than Plus is better?NO! Isn't it true that for every darkness there is light? Should it become the great battle of the math properties? NO! It would be addition vs subtraction in a battle for ultimate supremacy. We know who should win. The average American women in 06' was a 14, and now in 09' is a 16. But what size are the people manufacturing the clothes?

For all the moments when I felt confident and sure and dressed to a T (my clothing collection from my trinity of stores was unmatched from years of a honed eye), it still wasn’t the same because I was told that it shouldn't be the same. For all of my embracing moments of prettiness and "fat" pride, there were still voices and stares. There were times when I wanted to channel the Civil Rights Movement: make signs, protest/ boycott any store that had the audacity to not sell anything above a 10 for women and a 38 for men. I wanted to rally people together and have a sit in with wonderful chats : “Hell no we wont go, We wont just buy accessories here anymore!!!” These stores were clearly throwing out vibes that we were unwanted, and that we could be separate but equal. I always felt comfortable in Lane Bryant but never Abercrombie or the Loft. Separate was not equal and it made us feel as such! That always applied to things beyond race for me. It made us long for the clothing styles that we could not find in our stores {no such thing as a halter, no such thing as a skinny jean at that time, and definitely no such thing as overtly go get em sexy} and made us cherish the silhouettes that mimicked smaller size in our own stores.

But that skirt changed so much for me. It was my peacemaker. While I was still angry and writing articles about Obese Discrimination for anyone that would publish them, I loved that skirt. I couldn’t be angry about it. I didnt care about misses in a skirt like that. It stopped about two inches above my knee instead of an inch past my knee, a slightly risque thing for me in those times, and it was a dark indigo wash. I must say, that skirt had some serious flare to it, and did something that my skirts normally didn’t do. It called attention to my legs with this new “tighter” cut and made me feel absolutely hands down ravishing. How could that be? It was the same exact size as my other skirts aside from the slight looseness, and it didn’t have any magic pixie dust sprinkled into it to decrease the width or depth of my thighs. So what was so different? Me? I just wanted to look beautiful in what I was wearing, and had always felt that way in jeans [at that point I had 22 pairs, and v neck shirts (you cant be 375 without accompanying cleavage)], but never in a skirt. And I began to realize over that first month that it didn’t really matter what size I was, but how I felt in the size that I was. I was shining. And while still confused about where this path was taking me, I was really looking forward to it and enjoying the silence of Myself in my head, at that moment, as I stood in the dressing room.